Fastly stock is down 30% on Thursday: this is why

Fastly Inc (NYSE: FSLY) is down more than 30% in the stock market on Thursday after the cloud company reported market-beating results for its fiscal Q4 but gave dovish guidance for full-year revenue.

Important points in the Q4 report

• Fastly lost $57.5 million in the fourth quarter.
• On an adjusted basis, it lost 10 cents per share versus the year-ago figure of 9 cents per share.
• At $97.7 million, revenue came in 18% higher than the same quarter last year.
• FactSet consensus was for 16 cents of adjusted per-share loss on $92.5 million in revenue.
• Low churn resulted in annual recurring revenue of 99.2%, as per the earnings press release.

Fastly expects a slowdown in 2022

Fastly expects revenue growth to lose pace in 2022. The cloud computing services provider forecasts roughly 14.3% increase in revenue this year versus 21.8% it posted for fiscal 2021. Its full-year guidance for per-share loss (adjusted) and revenue was also below experts’ forecast, but CEO Joshua Bixby said:

The downbeat guidance had analysts at BofA Securities, Morgan Stanley, and Piper Sandler slash their price targets on the stock this morning. FSLY is now exchanging hands at $19.50 versus its IPO price of $16 a share in 2019.